The Witch's Hunger (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 3) (2 page)

“Don’t you play dumb with me, Morgan le Fay. If you are not behind this, then tell me what you know.”

I rubbed my forehead, but no more memories rose up to inform me about what she could possibly be talking about.

“Speak or I will roast your organs,” she hissed.

“My skin and my organs? Threaten me again, Cleopatra. Please. That will go well for you. Or perhaps you could instead tell me what in five red hells you are talking about. I live far from any gossip circuit. On purpose. And I’ve been on—” Vacation. For nine weeks. After centuries away from my love, and with an undetermined future, I thought we both deserved that. Not that I needed or wanted to explain any of that to this alchemist. “On leave. Doing research.”

“Research in Belize? Are you investigating margaritas and flexible men?”

Damn. Lila had told her where I was. Lila. Cleopatra wouldn’t hurt her, would she? Likely not, but if I was wrong?

I turned from Merlin and grabbed my bag. I touched my crystal ball and whispered, “Cartref.”

A moment later I appeared in my store, standing between Cleopatra and Lila. Both looked startled. I looked Lila up and down, checking to make sure she was unharmed in any way. My shopgirl ran at me and gave me a quick hug.

“So good to see you, Morgan!”

I hugged Lila back briefly, feeling the sharp eyes of Cleopatra watching everything. I turned to the alchemist. “Tell me what you are on about, Cleopatra. Speak.”

“Gladly.” The woman stood straight-backed and tall, with her long black hair tied up in a neat bun at the base of her neck. She wore slim pants that showed off her long legs and a shirt with many pockets that no doubt hid an arsenal of liquids and powdered chemicals. The alchemist gave me a searing look. “You really don’t know?”

I shook my head.

She jutted her chin out and scowled. Then she burst into tears. “My Ada has disappeared. She told me she was working on something, and might be in trouble. Now she is gone, and if you weren’t the one who attacked her, then I need your help.”

3

Heavy with Fruit

Cleopatra wiped the tears from her eyes. “Gods, Morgan. Look at you. The last time I saw you, you promised you would ruin my life and destroy anyone I loved if I ever crossed your path again. I thought, with my Ada gone missing, that I might have bumped into you, unknowing, and you had attacked. I thought I might not recognize you. Time changes people.” She scowled and took a step closer to me. “You haven’t changed at all.”

“Coffee? Anyone want coffee?” Lila asked.

“Yes,” Cleopatra and I answered at the same time.

“I said I would destroy your love, and now she is missing?” I asked Cleopatra carefully, not wanting to give away the fact that I had no memory of it.

“You’ve forgotten? Because I matter so little to you?” She glared and her hand slipped into her pocket. “You shouldn’t underestimate me like that.”

“Um, there’s sort of more than that going on, it’s not her fault her forgetting spell is breaking slowly,” Lila said.

I glared at her.

“I mean what spell? What? Anyway,” She came between us and handed us cups of black coffee. “What do I know? Nothing, really….”

“Perhaps you forget that I was once you closest friend, Morgan?” Cleopatra asked, taking a step toward me.

With her words, I felt dizzy and faint. I reached out for something to steady me as I collapsed to the floor and fell long and hard into the forgotten lands of my memory.

“More tea?” Cleopatra asked.

We sat in her packed clay courtyard where dozens of pomegranate trees lay heavy with fruit, each with a different varietal. She was working on hybridizing the plumpest pomegranate with the largest seeds.

“Alchemists make the best tea,” I said as I sipped the black brew that had hints of mint and vanilla in it.

“We can’t help it, we must tinker and experiment with everything. There’s that insatiable need to figure everything out.” She sighed. “Which might explain why I am an utter disaster as a lover.”

“That’s not the rumors I’ve heard,” I said lightly.

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean the mechanics. Saints and sinners, I’m a true ancient, Morgan. If I didn’t have that down, you might as well hang me. It’s the rest of it which vexes me.”

“Trouble with Hasina?” I asked. Cleo’s current lover was an actress who excelled in the role of making my friend miserable. I didn’t understand the attraction, but since I’d already told Cleopatra what I thought about Hasina months ago, it was now my job to listen.

“She worries alchemy might be wicked. She found one of my journals and read it, and thinks I am making deals with the devil since I had been experimenting with divining the uses of the devil’s claw root.”

“Which is?”

“An African root useful for all kinds of inflammation.”

“Ah. Then may she never learn you are friends with a true and wicked witch,” I said.

“And she’s started to ask me all the time about my immortality and when I’ll make her immortal.”

“Beware the girlfriend who asks that favor,” I said lightly.

She nodded and frowned. “It isn’t that I wouldn’t let her touch my philosopher’s stone. It’s just that she’s just too young to understand or have any sense of what immortality means. I’ve told her we can talk about it when she’s several decades older. She calls me condescending.”

I nodded and suppressed a flush of… I didn’t have a good word for it, but I held dark feelings about Cleopatra’s philosopher’s stone. She’d made the thing by binding a cup of Grail water to granite, centuries before I’d ever laid eyes on the cup. I wondered if she thought about the Grail these days. I wondered if she ever thought about hunting for it, and the question opened up other dark pathways in my soul. “It’s a lot of work being in love with a normal person,” I said. “Is she worth it?”

“As though Merlin is an easy lover?” she said and fixed me with her knowing eyes as she sipped tea.

“Aye,” I agreed. “My wizard is many things but never easy.”

“The last time I saw him he was complaining of some kind of demon attacking him in his sleep.”

I nodded and started to think about her words, but then my mind fell out of that memory and jumped forward to a bit later in the same day.

“Humans,” Cleopatra was saying as she mixed powders together in a mortar and pestle. “Our species would be better served if there was some way to make us all simply tell the truth.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Though I’m not sure being as predictable as your powders and elixirs would help anything. Speaking of, you wanted to show me your latest experiments.”

Cleopatra made a sticky paste and rolled it into small black balls that she threw at the ground. They exploded and filled the air with a noxious smoke that made us both cough.

“Useful,” I said, and showed her a spell where I too could make exploding stones that smoked.

We discussed in detail the properties of the chemicals and magic that went into these objects. Cleopatra was convinced that magic was, at its root, based in alchemical properties not yet divined. I thought she was wrong, and that magic was a separate force in the universe.

“Someday we will know all the secrets of this world,” Cleopatra said.

“Someday,” I murmured, and wondered if there would ever come a day when it was all so known that my hunger for this life would ebb.

I came back to this now, this far away and modern here, with a deep gulp of breath and the lingering scent of pomegranates and salt-peter. The spicy scent of the incense liked to burn while I was gone filled the air and rooted me into my true reality. My head throbbed and I felt blood flow from my nose. I wiped it away with a handful of tissues that Lila handed me.

“
That’s an effect of the breaking forgetting spell?” Cleopatra asked, and added sharply, “Who put the spell on her?”

“Not me,” Lila said, holding up both hands.

Cleopatra leveled her cunning gaze at me. “You put it on yourself, didn’t you? No other witch or wizard could have done so, besides Merlin, perhaps, but he hasn’t the stones. This spell, does it have anything to do with why and how I haven’t seen you in close to a thousand years?”

“I’m… not sure. Yes, I suppose it does,” I said before I stopped to consider whether I could trust her with any of my truths. I had one memory of her. I didn’t know our true history. Yet I had a gut feeling she was still my friend, this woman who I had apparently threatened and then forgotten so long ago. I scowled down at the blue line on my wrist, wishing it would reveal all the secrets of my life.

Cleopatra looked at me and softened. “Gods and monsters, Morgan. You forgot me? How could anyone forget me?”

We shared a smile.

“Now, about your missing Ada,” I said and led her back to the small table that I used for readings at the back of my store. It sat near to my door. My secret room that led to the Grail. Just the thought of it made me thirsty. Just the thought of it made me wonder if this was all a ruse and Cleopatra was here to claim it. Let her try. I could feel the call and pull of the Grail behind me. Soon, I thought. Soon I will come to you and I wished I could open that door and go to it right now, even though there would only be a couple of drops in the cup since it had been mere hours since I’d been here. I blinked and realized Cleopatra was talking to me.

“Ada would never leave without telling me where she was going. Oh, Morgan, I’ve wanted to tell you about her for centuries. She’s perfect. A scientist. The first computer scientist, really. She’s lovely and funny and she is my heart.” Cleopatra’s face crumpled and she started crying again. “Listen to me talk like a lovesick girl. I’m sorry.”

“Love is awesome. It never needs an apology,” Lila said. She joined us at the table.

I nodded. “The one who will be sorry is whoever attacked her. Tell us everything.”

Cleopatra took in a shuddering breath and nodded. She sat down on the edge of a wicker love seat. “Ada had discovered something interesting, she said. She was going to tell me about it when I went to London on Tuesday. She didn’t want to say anything over the phone, even though she has both of us talk over an encrypted line. She said it wasn’t safe.” Cleopatra smiled. “My Ada is a paranoid hacker. She knows much too much about technology to ever trust it. She told me that she might be in danger, and I might be too, but that it was an interesting kind of danger.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Her computer intelligence sent me a video.” Cleopatra took out a tablet from her oversized purse. She held it out so Lila and I could see it, pressed some buttons to turn it on, and swooshed her finger around expertly until a video began to play of a dark room, of someone moving about, then a bright light, so bright it broke the optic of whatever video recorded it. Then someone screamed. “There was no sign of her left in her apartment.”

“Perhaps there is some magical residue that might be difficult for you to find,” I said.

Cleopatra drew herself up and looked ready to hit me.

“Which is not to imply incompetence,” I said quickly. “Just that we have different specialties. I meant I can go there, if you like. Who would wish her harm?”

“That’s just it. No one, really. She’s lovely, and keeps to herself. Everyone who knows her, everyone who has spent five minutes with her, falls in love with her.”

“Everyone?” I asked.

“I suppose there may be a jealous programmer here and there who envies her skills. And perhaps a lover or two from my past.”

“How many of your old loves did you turn immortal, Cleopatra?” I asked.

“That’s none of your concern.” Cleopatra stood and told me Ada’s London address. “You’ll meet me there, at high tea today? There are a few others I wish to speak to before then.”

“I’ll be there with Merlin,” I said. “Between the two of us we may be able to find her quickly.”

Cleopatra nodded once. She stood and raised her arms. A dark cloud began to billow out from around her coat, thick and black. It obscured her form. The inky, marshmallow-smelling smoke began to dissipate, and when it did, we saw she was gone.

“Drama,” Lila said. “She’s good at it. It’s fun to meet an old friend of yours, Morgan. And it’s really good to see you.”

I nodded and looked past Lila at the door. The cup was there. Within easy reach. Perhaps I should slip inside for a moment. It wouldn’t be much, but any water at all would be amazing. But then there would be less then when I came back later.

“I’ve been wanting to just talk with you? You know? I miss you. Is there something I need to know about that room?” she asked. I felt like tearing her apart when she glanced behind her at the door I couldn’t stop staring at.

I made myself smile. “Nothing. And I miss you, too.”

She said, “It’s really cool you can just pop in here. I didn’t know you could do that.”

Paranoia, thick and bitter, poured through me. Would she tell Merlin? Would she suspect I came here often? I made myself breathe and remembered this was Lila. She was a girl and not any great witch who would be able to discern any piece of the truth. “There are many things you don’t know about me,” I said lightly.